The
Bates Method
is not Eye Exercises

The
Bates Method is not the same as eye exercises

It is a
very common misconception about the Bates Method, but Dr. Bates
did not actually teach 'eye exercises.' Yet most people think you
have to do lots of eye exercises if you want to improve your vision.

Do
you immediately think of moving your eyes, as far as possible in
all directions, doing large circular eye motions, and alternately
looking near and far? That is the general concept of eye exercises.
This is fine if you start doing eye exercises when your
vision is good; because, yes, if done with ease rather
than strain, they will help keep your sharp focus.
But, if you haveblurryvision,
your eye muscles are under a chronic strain, and adding eye exercises
on top of strained eye muscles is not a smart idea! Instead of improving
your vision, you may find, like I did,
that eye exercises do nothing for your vision at all, or that doing
such eye 'push-ups' may even cause worse vision.

What
strained eye muscles need, first and foremost, is relaxation.
If you pull a muscle in your leg and want it to heal, do you first
give your leg a rest or do you begin with a vigorous work-out? I
bet squats will be off the menu for a while! After an initial rest
period, you begin with gentle motions for that leg and build up
from there. Your eye muscles need a similar approach. Rest comes
first, gentle and natural motions are next, and after good vision
has been restored you can get back to a 'full work-out' if you wish.

The
fact is repeatedly emphasized that
the exercises of the eyes are not work or effort,
but rather that everything recommended
is to secure physiological rest of the eyes,
a condition which is found only with
central fixation and perfect vision.William H. Bates,
M.D., 1915

Dr.
Bates never used the term Eye Exercises the way it is used these
days, meaning a set of physical eye movements in order to ‘strengthen’
the eyes.

Bates
preferred to not even let his patient know (especially if it was
a child) that something was done with the aim of improving the
sight. If something else could be thought about, so much the better.
In the case of a child with strabismus, the child was told that
swinging was "not for the eyes at all but just to see if
it gave them a better color in their cheeks." This way the
attention was diverted from the eyes and visual relaxation was
achieved sooner. (Better Eyesight magazine, August
1924)

Dr.
Bates' assistant Emily gave an example of a patient who had gone
elsewhere for a course of “eye muscle exercises.”
She mentioned that this person was not helped at all, and he later
found out that the methods used were not the Bates Method. (Better
Eyesight magazine, February 1928)

In
general, Dr. Bates tended to use the term ‘relaxation exercise’
instead of ‘eye exercise’. In the few instances where
he did refer to ‘muscular exercises’ he was talking
about physical exercise of muscles other than the eyes.

Another
term Dr. Bates used several times was ‘exercises in distant
vision.’ This encompassed looking at the smallest letters
that could be read easily on a familiar eye chart for half a minute
daily with each eye separately. Developing the skill of staying
relaxed with an eye chart at distance, by only looking at letters
that can be read easily, was an important part of his method.

I
think that, overall, the term ‘eye exercises’ in and
of itself tends to create mental strain and therefore eye strain,
and it is best avoided when you learn or teach how eyesight can
be improved.

Bates
was never tired of insisting on a fact which is now a commonplace
of psychology, namely that vision is at least fifty per cent a
mental process and that improvement in the mental state of patients
suffering from defective vision was apt to result in improvement
in their seeing and ultimately, through the effect of good functioning
upon organic defect, in their eyes. In this respect Bates
Method differed radically from the methods of orthoptics, which
ignore the mental side of seeing and seek to improve vision by
the repetition of fatiguing exercises. Being based on unsound
principles, orthoptics do little or no good. Being based
on essentially sound principles, Bates Method is often very effective. Aldous Huxley